Unit C
by MuckingFagic
Summary: You've heard of Charles Henderson's Espionage Research Unit B or CHERUB, right? What about Unit C - A black ops team made up of the most talented agents on campus. They carry out the missions too dangerous and immoral for the ethics committee to ever allow. This is their story. READ & REVIEW.
1. Prologue: A Lesson in Pain

The impact and consequences of certain actions are said to be largely dependent upon the situational context of said action. In an everyday situation, it would be considered foolhardy to think that leaving a glove on the ground would be cause for any significant trouble long term (unless that glove happened to be crafted from the fragments of the Turin Shroud).

So, what if the situational context of said action was shifted to something much less everyday?

What if you were a child spy in a war-torn country under service to the British government through an organisation that very few knew existed?

In late 2010, the West African nation of Côte d'Ivoire had its first democratic elections in over 10 years. The incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, was announced the winner of the election amidst a sea of controversy that the opposition candidate, Alassane Ouattara , was the rightful victor. This sentiment was shared by a number of countries, organisations and leaders worldwide, all who claimed Gbagbo had rigged the outcome.

After months of attempted negotiation, the sporadic violence that had accompanied the hoped transition of power erupted into full scale civil war; with the pro-Gbagbo military going up against the UN-backed RFCI.

Though not officially involved in the fighting, a series of intercepted communications gave British intelligence cause to believe that elements within the Ivorian military were involved in illegal mercenary work with Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

In March 2011, CHERUB agent Huey Newton and his controller Derek Cutherly had been sent into the capital of Côte d'Ivoire to verify this claim. It was a routine mission, requiring only a few days to find a gap in the security of one of the military bases. The soldiers were spread very thinly as they concentrated their efforts on the fighting further south.

Posing as the son of one of the British Embassy staff, Huey had been able to slip around the streets of Abidjan to scope out the targeted base. It was thought that the general of the pro-Gbagbo army had his offices there.

Slipping in under cover of darkness, Huey successfully infiltrated the main building of the military compound. Having made his way through the building, he found the offices of the general and had attempted to pick the lock, pausing once only to hide from the guard patrolling that section of the building. Removing one of his gloves to speed up the lock picking process, the spy managed to get the door open within moments. It was a short lived victory, however, as he would later find that the glove had slipped out of his pocket and dropped in the doorway, preventing the door from shutting fully.

It was here that sod's law had been observed, with the guard doubling back upon himself to make use of the little soldier's room. It had been he who had found Huey rifling through the office of the general and efficiently incapacitated the boy with a powerful blow from the stock of his rifle.

Yes. It's quite clear how something as seemingly inconsequential as a glove on the ground could have much greater impact on someone's life.

* * *

"Who are you?"

The question cut through the treacle that his brain was seemingly swimming in. He took in the environment that he found himself currently occupying. It was a seemingly disused part of the military base resembling a hangar. Under the primary layer of dust, the floor was polka dotted with grime and filth that could only be of biological origin. The old furniture that housed the various odd looking tools seemed to support Huey's initial theory.

It was an interrogation room.

As much as CHERUB prepares agents for the worst possible outcomes, interrogation is something which is touched upon very briefly. Torture – not so much. How did he know it would be torture? Perhaps it was the fact that he was in his boxers, tied to a chair in the middle of the room with a knife-holding man a few feet away. It was the target – the general.

_"Keep to your cover story. Just keep to your cover story."_

"My father. He works for the embassy-"

The 15 year old screamed in pain as the knife sliced across his bare chest in a long, shallow stroke. The general, quick as a snake, shot his hand into the boy's mouth.

"Lie to me again" He said, gripping Huey's tongue firmly betwixt his calloused finger and thumb. "I will slice this off."

The general had not gotten to his position of power by being a stupid man. He could tell when someone had something hidden. The very fact that this child had not begun to cry out in vain desperation when he found himself tied to a chair wearing only his underwear proved that there was more to him that he was saying.

It was not unheard of for children to be used to gather information about shady dealings in this corner of the world. He himself had once paid a pair of children to follow a higher ranking officer in order to find out what the man did when he said he was taking personal time off base. The resulting controversy over the story that he had been soliciting the services of young men in a well-known undesirable part of the capital had resulted in his dismissal from the post of general and that role being taken over by the current general, the man who had uncovered it all.

Unfortunately, there was much more at stake here for the general than some power. The soldier who had found the prisoner stated that he had been in his office, looking through documents that were in his drawers. The information would spell disaster if leaked to members of the Republican Forces.

That was who the child had to be working for: the RFCI. If they had information of his arms trafficking to Libya, it could mean that they could intercept the weapons and use them against the military.

Killing this child would serve no purpose. He had to know what the boy knew and who he was working with. Snapping his fingers, he barked a command at the only soldier present and the man hopped to attention before leaving the room.

Huey resisted the involuntary urge to urinate upon himself as he tried to regain a modicum of composure. Well, as much composure as was possible to regain when wearing Batman boxers.

"Tell me. Who is your contact on the base?"

Huey blinked for a few moments in an attempt to block the main from the shallow wound on his chest. He didn't have a contact on the base. He hadn't been trained for something like this. If he told him the cover story, the general would think that he was lying and would probably make good on his promise to cut Huey's tongue out. If he lied, then the general would kill him after verifying.

He had to stay quiet.

Huey kept his eyes shut and his mouth clenched, not wanting either of those organs to be easily accessible by the man. He could hear the sound of a second person entering the room. There was an odd noise, a sort of sloshing sound.

He dared not open his eyes to peek at what it could be but he listened keenly as the sloshing became a gurgling noise. It became higher and higher in pitch until it stopped, with the sound of metal hitting the ground signifying the completion of the unknown action.

No matter how much he hated to admit it, he there was a small amount of fear bubbling in him. He didn't think he was still on the military base and his mission controller would have no way to find him. The fatal flaw with not spilling the beans straight away was that the general would become more and more suspicious the longer he lasted through whatever he had planned. It was a Catch -22 scenario.

Eyes still shut; he was pushed backward and could feel his stomach lurch as if he were on a rollercoaster. His dark world span for an instant before his head and shoulders were plunged into cold, icy water. He couldn't breathe and the surprise of the act had knocked most of the air from his lungs, the rest of it quickly escaping as he struggled under the water. He strained against the bonds strapping his hands and ankles to the wooden chair but they did not give.

Internally, panic and rage and a twisting vortex of helplessness bubbled off from the depth of his core. A lightheaded blackness began to envelope his mindscape as the lack of air got to him. On some level, he knew this blackness was dangerous and yet, he felt the need to go straight to it. He needed to touch it. To end this torture before it could begin.

Externally, the cold was real and not just a jumble of now foreign emotions. From his restrained position, he could feel his skin begin to freeze up. His lungs had long since reached the burning point that signified increased oxygen deprivation but he wouldn't let himself break.

Not now.

He was pulled out of the water after the ten seconds that had felt like eternity. Huey sputtered out the dregs of water that had invaded his cavities and panted heavily, sucking in air like it was essential for his survival. Out of reflex, his eyes had opened once his head was removed from the water and he was greeted with an image of the general in his beret, inches away from his face.

"Who are you working for?"

* * *

Time passed in the interrogation room.

It could have been hours.

It could have been days.

The concept of time was one of the first things lost to the boy after he had been blindfolded.

The next had been his self-association. After the eighth or so repetition of the waterboarding torture, he had begun to feel as though he were in a dreamlike world of colour, viewing the activity from a third person perspective. Sometimes, Huey was glad for the slightly damaging effects of prolonged oxygen deprivation and malnutrition.

A battle seemed to rage on between the bubbles of colour that populated his mind and a blackness that seemed to stick to him like molasses. It came from a place he didn't know he had and in a flicker of lucidity, wasn't sure actually existed. It was so strong and so immediate; it defied all sense and logic, all reason and rhyme.

He wanted to laugh.

There was yelling. He, himself, was yelling. The words coming from his own mouth were incomprehensible due to the water but the raw and scratchy feel to his throat said he had begun screaming long before and would continue long after. It was nothing but noise, drowning, and a useless struggle to go nowhere, once again.

Finally, the myriad of colours that seemed to have been dancing in his mind was gone, completely covered by the darkness. His body ached as he came back to the land of consciousness and he could feel a chuckle trying to escape his throat as he was pulled from the water once more.

The whole point of CHERUB sending in a child to do the task was that children were supposed to be less suspect to a criminal. The whole reason he was going through this process was _because _he was a child and that made him more suspect.

It was all one big joke.

It was hardly the proper situation for laughter but the desire was so strong that he had a hard time stifling it. It wasn't that he found the pain enjoyable – far from it. It was the sheer comic irony that the universe had thrown at him.

Light streamed into his consciousness in a wholly blinding manner. The blindfold had been removed but his vision was still too hazy to make out the person in front of him. He was snapped out of his light headedness by the feeling of blood rushing back into his extremities. His hands were being untied by someone – the general's soldier. As he was released, he slumped forward in the chair like a puppet whose strings had been severed.

For Huey, it took nearly five minutes before his muscles started to function. In that time, his sensory perceptions came back to him with such force that he was left dazed. It was an adrenaline rush, seemingly from nowhere. For the first time, he could truly appreciate just how bleak his situation was.

The soldier was the only one in the expansive room with him. Huey watched as the man began to untie his feet from the chair, freeing him. Muttering something that sounded vaguely French, Huey felt something jab him in the nape of his neck.

Whilst Huey may not have spoken French, he knew the message a gun to the back conveyed.

Stepping up slowly, he tested out his legs to make sure they were still functional. The soldier jabbed him in the back once more, telling him to speed up. Huey knew that this was it for him. He was being taken somewhere to be killed. Scanning the path he was walking from the centre of the room to the door he was being led to like cattle to the slaughter, Huey searched for anything he could use.

His legs dropped from under him and he hit a table before plummeting to the floor. With his free hand, the solider tried to grab the boy and lift him up from his face down position. In that moment, Huey lashed out at the soldier using the broken mirror piece he had spotted on the desk moments earlier.

It had cut into his hand when he pretended to faint but it was all worth it to see the soldier bleeding from the numerous wounds that now cut across his body. He liked the way the glass cut under the skin slightly, as if it were made of the toughest diamond.

The mirror shattered as it hit the ground. Huey scavenged the dead man's pockets for anything he could use. The only items he had on his person were the gun and a dead Nokia 3310. Taking both of those items, Huey made his way to the hangar exit.

The closer he got to the outside world, the louder the noises of gunfire became. It was almost as if it was taking place outside. The figure of the general ran into the hanger from the left side of him and the boy turned quickly to face him, raising the gun. He could feel the adrenaline rush that had accompanied his return to consciousness begin to fade but he managed to fight it off.

The moment his grip tightened around the gun, his mind snapped back to Basic Training.

"_Keep your eyes level with the sight. Make sure the safety is off and keep your finger on the trigger. Watch your breathing. Keep it slow and shallow. Your legs, they'll try to go from under you. You must fight that at all cost and keep your stance strong. You must not falter even for a second because a situation like that is life or death. Keep your wits about you."_

Though the overwhelming light-headedness threatened to force him to his knees, Huey held the gun steadily in his hand. The blood trickled down the grip of the pistol and _drip drip dripped_ onto the ground, adding to the already congealed mess of fluids.

"Oh, so you think you can –"

Huey would never find out what the general thought that he thought he could do. This was due to the bullet that had perforated directly through his throat. This inability to speak was then compounded by a second bullet through the skull which sent the man to the floor, his beret landing in the rapidly pooling crimson. He let out the breath he didn't know he had been holding as the gun swung to his side.

The man was dead.

He had _killed_ two men.

He had killed two men wearing nothing but _Batman_ _boxers_.

His vision was the first to go as the adrenaline rush wore off. He couldn't see straight but could make out the shapes of firearm wielding people that were pointing at him as they entered the hangar. Their voices rang loud. Thousands of voices passed through his ears. No, that was an exaggeration. It was dozens of voices, but filtered through the mind of a boy who had gone without food, reverberated within the confines of his skull, and warped by his thoughts, the dozens became innumerable.

Then, there was nothing.

* * *

From behind plexiglass, the three figures watched the slowly rising chest of the boy who lay in the hospital bed, hooked to multiple machines.

"Two days." The first figure read from a copy of the file that all three of the figures were holding. "Beaten, cut and waterboarded. From what MI6 has told us, no valuable information was let slip and the data he managed to transmit helped the push into Libya."

The second figure remained tried to remain impassive at the mention of the torture by the older man standing to her left but couldn't help but grimace slightly. She flipped the file over and began to read off information.

"Huey Newton. 15. Navy." She said. "Sir, do you really think that just because he got lucky in Côte d'Ivoire, it means that he's suitable?"

"Yes, Sam. I do."

"But sir, it's written in here that he's the reason why the Urban Warfare compound was out of action for a month." She scowled at the thought. "He's too much of a loose cannon."

"I wouldn't have expected anything less from him, to be honest." The third figure finally spoke. He had previously been focusing on the long arc which scarred the hospitalised boy's chest, deep in contemplation but snapped out it to voice his opinion. "He might not be the easiest to work with but he's incredibly talented, there's no mistaking that."

"What would have happened if he hadn't been picked up by the UN peacekeeping force? No matter what Shepard says, sir. I still think he got lucky."

"Scared of a little competition are we, Samantha?"

"Not likely, Shepard." The short haired girl responded, visibly annoyed at the use of her full name. "I just don't think he's got what it takes."

The first figure turned away from the clear glass and faced the pair that stood before him. They were two of his finest agents, yet sometimes they still bickered like the teenagers they were. Sometimes, it was hard being the chairman.

"It's my decision." Voiced the Chairman. "I think he's suitable. We'll sort the preparations out for his training. He's Unit C material."


	2. Chapter 1: New York In December

_An explosion rocked the streets of New York City today. In what officials are calling a "subterraneous shift", an underground pocket of previously unencountered pocket of concentrated natural gas went off in the sewers underneath the streets of the city. The explosion resulted in the closure of a main road as many metres of the road buckled inwards, already damaged by the icy temperatures encountered by the whole of the eastern US. As of yet, the Office of Emergency Management has reported zero casualties._

_-_Excerpt from BBC News, 12nd December 2011

"Explain it to me again why we have to take down half the road."

"This isn't The Italian Job, Sam. We can't accurately predict the location of his car-"

"Shepard's right. Even a few centimetres off and we run the risk of taking out a street lamp. It could crush a bystander! Not to mention the chance of flipping the car, potentially injuring or even killing Moore." Nina cut in stereotypically, not even bothering to raise her head to the pair priming the explosive charges onto the sewer walls. Sam shot the blonde girl a look but she paid it no mind, focusing solely on the last segments of code she was completing. Her military boots swung over the passenger side of the catering van as she finished typing away on the small netbook in her lap. Stowing it away, she spoke clearly, her earpiece transmitting the audio. "Did you get that, Lucas?"

Less than 3 miles away, in the cabin of a private jet, a boy no older than 16 was monitoring a few computer screens and sat back in a leather recliner, sipping on a hot mug of coffee which he himself had prepared using the on-board facilities – an achievement he was most proud of. The jet was docked in a hangar just off of the main runway at JFK International Airport and it was from here that the mobile base of Unit C's operation was set up.

"Yes, it's uploaded and I'm waiting your arrival." He said replied, looking around the decadently furnished aircraft in an utterly nonplussed manner. The file icon blinked in the bottom of the screen, the _successful transfer_ text overlaying the CCTV feed he currently had up. Lazily moving the mouse and minimising the annoying popup, he went back to watching the target in his usual detached way.

Ralph Moore was by no means a common criminal. A senior executive in General Motors – one of the largest US car companies – he could hardly be thought a mere thief. However, this man had set up a fraudulent investment scheme which, at its peak, had juggled investments whilst siphoning off a small fortune for himself. That was before it all went bust in the early months of 2011, clearing out thousands of investors to the tune of 8.1 billion dollars.

Unfortunately, Moore was a smart man and it was for this reason that the US hadn't placed cuffs on him. Firstly, he chose to work through intermediates and middle men to ensure that his role in the activity was never truly known. He had made sure that the investors came from mainly European countries, refusing to accept trans-national corporations of significance in the US. He had also greased a few palms at the highest echelons of his company, making sure that significant "donations" were made to the relevant government officials. That, coupled with the US' staunch unwillingness to extradite one of their own to face trial abroad meant that even if he did get caught, it would be very unlikely that he would have to appear in a court of law.

Perhaps it was merely coincidence that a few of the distraught investors happened to have frequent the same circles as the British Prime Minister but within a few months of the scheme's collapse, British intelligence had enough evidence pointing in the direction of Moore's intimate involvement to detain him.

MI6 would be too noticeable to their American counterparts at Langley. Sending in an SAS team would be a sure-fire broadcast to the world that Britain and the US weren't best of friends; this would be tantamount to starting World War III.

It was only logical to send in Unit C. A team with both espionage and military training fit perfectly in this role. As far as the Prime Minister knew, the group was composed of SAS recruits who had undergone experimental training. In reality, a group of kids had been sent to bring to justice a man who had robbed from those who funded the political party currently in power.

Alas, it was not for them to question why.

Tipping the mug to its almost vertical state, Lucas pondered this as he finished the last of his coffee. Stepping out of his recliner to make another cup of the dark elixir, a movement on the monitor was danced on the peripherals of his vision. Slipping back into the comfy leather, he tracked Moore as he and his assistant walked through the lobby of the hotel.

Switching to the outside view, he kept a close eye on the target. Moore was having what seemed to be an extremely animated conversation with the mousy looking woman clutching various items of organisational stationary. He appeared to be berating this woman about some kind of error she had made but Lucas, for all his natural ability, couldn't decipher the movement of the man's lips without sound.

It mattered not, for the conversation seemed to end with Moore getting into the Bentley and slamming the silver door behind him – leaving his assistant to contemplate her follies in the mid December chill as the chauffeured car pulled off into the street. The car paused at the traffic lights near to the hotel and then made a right turn, going further into the hustle and bustle of New York. Lucas breathed a sigh of relief as the car became boxed in by the surrounding traffic; it meant he could go grab another cup of coffee. When he returned to the computer array, he was greeted by the sight of the target's vehicle moving out of the camera's field of view. He placed to coffee down and yawned slightly as he switched to the next camera along, following the car down a slightly less congested road.

It wasn't that Lucas didn't care about the mission. On the contrary, he cared extremely deeply about getting the job done and getting it done the right way. It was just that he found certain aspects of his job so incredibly boring that he would drift off and find something new to stimulate his mind. The team found a solution in that Lucas was permitted to do whatever he wished to do to keep himself entertained on his end, so long as he didn't bugger up the job he was assigned. That meant for now, he had full permission to engage in as many flash games as he wanted whilst he kept an eye on the cameras.

Of course, he wasn't too hard to find if Lucas lost him. Not many New Yorkers drove around in Bentleys. Really, given what was about to happen to the car, Lucas felt bad for it. He didn't feel too bad for the occupant though.

"You've got about ten seconds," Lucas informed the team in the usual removed voice he spoke in, doing his best to shield the light jazz coming from the next computer along, on which he had got Bloons Tower Defence 5 up. He started up the next level before turning back to the camera footage.

"Five seconds," he said. He reached for his coffee, behind the computer screens, and took a nice long sip. "Three. Two. One." He watched with minor satisfaction as the road barely ten metres ahead of the car erupted into fire and collapsed in on itself. Five cars went down straight away, with two more going in before the Bentley. "It's in, down to you guys now."

* * *

Just before the ten second mark, the team were getting into position underground. Each donning their black balaclavas, they had adopted a pronged stance with two in the van and two on the outside – all well away from the explosives.

"I'll grab the wheel." Shepard intoned, passing Huey as the latter stepped out from his position in the back of the truck. "Remember, quick and clean. Have your fun when we're in the sky."

"How will I ever contain my urges?" Huey deadpanned in response as he stood next to Sam. The girl shot him a dirty look. At least he thought it was a dirty look. Balaclavas made it notoriously difficult to read facial expressions, what with them covering up one's face and all.

As Lucas counted down over the comms, the pair stood well back as the sewer wall caved in. Jumping through the gaping hole, Sam and Huey climbed through the rubble with speed. The dust had not yet settled and for the next minute or so, they would be completely shielded from the mid-morning sun which threatened to expose their subterfuge.

They found the Bentley near the middle of the stretch, lodged between a Nissan whose owner was bleeding and a yellow taxi cab which had its back two wheels up in the air, propped on the debris behind it. The Bentley's chauffer, a portly eastern European looking man, had gone straight through the passenger window as the car plummeted. It seemed that the impact had caused the seatbelt to snap and allow the force of the fall to have its way with him as the car rolled onto its side. Bleeding from multiple lacerations on his face, it didn't seem too likely that he would be opening his eyes anytime soon. Unfortunate as it was for his wife and four children, it was beneficial for this mission as it meant that the pair could get to work on extracting the lamely coughing man in the back seat.

He wasn't even able to utter a simple 'Oh, hello there. What fine balaclavas you are wearing. Would you mind telling me where you bought them?' before a vicious right elbow from Sam knocked the man unconscious. Between them, the pair were able to pull the man free from his car and through the wreckage, their pace quickening as the sound of sirens passed through the gaping hole connecting their dark underworld to the world above.

As soon as the pair had entered the sewer tunnel, Shepard started the engine on the catering van. Throwing Moore into the back with Nina, Sam jumped into the passenger seat next to Shepard and Huey joined the captive and the blonde girl in the back. The van had squealed away before the first shouts could be heard coming down from above.

Bracing himself against the chest freezer with one hand, Huey unzipped the duffel bag to reveal a syringe filled with a clear solution. Holding it up to the thin sliver of light which passed through the crack in the back doors, he prepped it with a couple of taps to the plastic to remove all possible bubbles.

"It's a mix of ketamine and a few bisbenzyltropiniums," he answered the unasked question which danced on Nina's lips. "Some of my best work. It causes the recipient to-"

"Be rendered completely immobile as the combination hallucinogenic and neuromuscular relaxants give the impression of complete paralysis and senility."

Huey was left gobsmacked for a few seconds but didn't even bother to think up some sort of witty response. He'd learnt that Nina's ability to call upon segments of the mission research with no respect for the tradition of narcissistic soliloquy was not intentionally offensive. Readying the needle to stick into Moore, Huey reasoned just have to find his fun elsewhere. He almost dropped the syringe as the truck lurched to a crawling speed. "Oi, could you keep it steady up there? Some of us are trying to give prisoners psychedelics back here!"

"Quiet down!" Sam hollered without looking over her shoulder. She adopted a softer tone as she spoke over the comms. "Lucas. We're at the door."

Lucas smirked slightly as he listened to the catering van over the comms. Typing in the commands which Nina had sent him earlier, the bars blocking the sewer from the outside world were opened and he watched as the vehicle puttered through into the light of day.

Clicking through several cameras to make sure he had the entire road ahead covered, Lucas sipped on some coffee as the van drove inconspicuously through the New York neighbourhoods. "You're going to pass two cop cars in about the next three minutes, drive sensibly." He flicked on the police scanner in the middle of the desk, which was set to the appropriate frequency, and listened. There was a lot of talk about the explosion in the street, which had apparently killed eight people, but nothing about the catering van.

"Hurry up, they're about to close off half of Manhattan Island," Lucas said calmly as he monitored the frenzy of voices on the emergency frequency. Theories ranged from terrorist attack to earthquake and all available personnel were being concentrated at the site. Lucas let out a sigh of relief as he watched the van cross the bridge and head towards him. Suddenly, something on the police scanner caught his attention.

_"All available units. We have a grand theft auto. A blue truck with licence plate Alpha Delta Lima Four-Six-Eight-One. Just passed Brooklyn Bridge heading east on York Street."_

"Not to alarm anyone," Lucas said down the comms as a police car on the bridge, as if on cue, fired up its blues-and-twos and U-turned to give chase to the catering van. "But they're onto you."

* * *

**What are your thoughts?  
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******Review!**


	3. Chapter 2: High Flying

Shepard gave a deep sigh as the news came through on the comms. This was the last thing he wanted to hear, especially since now he was being forced to break the 70 barrier on the crowded Brooklyn Bridge. Sam rested her feet on the dashboard and smirked as she gazed at Shepard "I take it you have a plan?"

Shepard always had a plan. Foresight was one of his many talents, and he certainly wasn't going to screw up this easy mission by getting caught over petty grand theft auto. "How the hell did they even pick up on that?" he mumbled as he artfully weaved between the traffic like a leopard bounding through the jungle. The mental cogs span at full speed as he decided which plan to use.

Huey's ears pricked at the sound of the sirens. "I take it that's for us?" he questioned towards Nina, clearly oblivious to Lucas as he was busy putting the needle in Mr Moore's arm. Nina nodded. "Lucas just got word over the radio, police are tailing us for GTA, of all bloody things." She sighed as she moved towards the section that split the back and front of the van. "What's the plan then Shepard?" she asked, as she looked down at the various cases that hid the floor.

Shepard had finally decided on a plan as he blasted off the Brooklyn Bridge, more police officers had joined the chase, totalling 4 cars now, dangerous driving was making them want to bring this to a swift stop. Though, it wasn't strictly dangerous, he was skilled at driving at this speed, but they wouldn't see it that way he thought to himself before replying.

"Huey, they're probabaly gonna try and pitbull us, if they try, open the back doors and lace 'em. DON'T kill them. Last thing I want is cop blood on our hands." he said commandingly as he held down the pressel on his radio, "Lucas, we're switching to plan Echo-2, make the necessary arrangements."

A feral smile spread across Huey's face. "Oh you spoil me Shepard, here was me thinking I wouldn't get to have any fun till we were airborne." he mused as he flicked open the nearest case revealing a Heckler & Koch G36C, a carbine weapon favoured by European special forces in vehicular operations, mainly for its small build and powerful 5.56mm round.

"Don't go too crazy! You better leave some for me!" Sam moaned from the front seat "Let me do something Shepard, I don't feel useful like this!" She kicked the dashboard with her hard boots. She could sometimes act like a spoiled brat, despite being capable of swiftly incapacitating a fully grown Russian thug with her bare hands.

"Lucas, where's clean?" Shepard glanced back and forth between the road and the mirrors. "We've got four or five on us."

Back on the plane, Lucas was working like a mad-man. Quickly flicking to another window, he pinpointed the team's location and quickly launched through a series of maps. In the run up to this mission, a few cars had mysteriously gone missing from various owners around the country. Though it would take a long time for the authorities to note this, all of the vehicles shared common characteristics with regards to their speed, manoeuvrability and suspension. Dotted around the city in CCTV blind spots with clothes in the boot, new paint jobs and some fake plates fitted on them, they were the perfect contingency plan in case things went tits up.

"Turn into Classon Avenue and then onto Monroe. Two quick lefts." He switched back to the CCTV screen. "You'll be hitting a one way system but from what little I can see, it's quiet."

Nina was perched behind Huey with several magazines for him to reload from should the need arise. Mr Moore began to slump in his seat as she watched the drugs taking effect. You could see it in the way his neck could no longer support his head and it was bobbing up and down as if he was drifting in and out of sleep. It was oddly amusing and hypnotising to watch.

"I wonder how that feels..." she contemplated as she moved some of her hair out of her face. "I imagine it could be quite blissful."

"Probably not." Huey retorted quite quickly as he checked over the gun. "Most of your muscles are forced to relax. Chances are Ralphie's shat himself." It was said so matter of factly that Nina genuinely questioned whether or not Huey had experienced it. Huey hadn't been a member of the team all that long, it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility. Her thoughts were quickly shattered by being flung across the van as Shepard took a sharp left and screeched to a halt. "Hey! Warn us before you do that!" she moaned as she rubbed her arm at the area which had connected with the catering freezer.

Switching gears deftly, Shepard had thrown the vehicle around the first corner, then the second. The van had covered enough ground on the main road to momentarily lose the police who, at this very moment, were speeding on past the avenue.

Shepard banged on the back wall. "Everybody out!" he yelled as he jumped out the van, an elderly woman looked at him baffled by the sudden appearance of masked men and women in her quiet suburban neighbourhood. The two cop cars with semi-competent drivers screeched to a halt a few feet away, the police scrambling messily to get out of their cars and draw their weapons. Huey seemed to emulate the Terminator as he opened the back door, began walking towards them and peppered their cars with bullets.

Shepard reached under the seat and grabbed the Sig Saur P220 he had been stashing for emergencies and began taking shots at the cop car to keep their heads down. Nina and Sam moved quickly; Sam grabbed the several smoke grenades from the glove box and threw them all around the car. The copious amount of smoke would provide ample cover for their escape. Nina on the other hand had the harder task of dragging Mr Moore out of the van. With him not able to control his body, it was like dragging a sack of potatoes. Nina wasn't particularly weak, but Sam would have been more suited to the job.

"NEXT TIME, YOU'RE CARRYING HIM!" she yelled as she continued to struggle, straining as she did.

Echo-2, as a name for a plan, didn't have much relevance. It didn't quite capture the essence of the action it embodied. Lucas had always thought they should call it "Plan: Titanic", for it was a much more suitable name. They were abandoning the "sinking" car and dashing into another with women and "children" first, the children being their target.

"Although that would make Shepard a woman..." he thought as he looked back at the computer screens. The suburbs didn't have much in the way cameras so he couldn't track their progress. Oh well, he'd done his bit, the pre-flight checks had been done, the permission to take off was only a finger tap away and he still had a nice warm coffee in his hands and hadn't lost a single life on his flash game. Things were going swell.

"_Shots fired. Shots fired. Requesting immediate backup_" were the messages being screaming across the police radio. He peered closely at the screen as the four police cars which had screeched past them earlier made synchronised U-turns and gunned their way back to the blind spot. It looked like the others were up to no good.

Indeed up to no good, the situation was becoming a bit manic. Shepard dashed and slid in next to Huey, taking cover behind one of the abandoned cop cars. "You know the plan right?" he questioned as he reloaded his pistol.

Huey didn't even look over, just kept firing shots every now and then to keep the police away. "Take them for a ride, Shepard. I have it all under control." He said. Shepard could only imagine the facial expression, but he could be sure it being as insane as he was.

"Good. We'll see you on the runway then, plane leaves in 20. With or without you." he said firmly as he put a hand on his shoulder, propped himself up and sprinted to the back-up car.

"Park us around there" he said to Sam as he pointed the Cadillac to a secluded corner, just off of the road they were currently on. They were parked perpendicular to the stand-off and they could only watch as Huey edged slowly back towards the smoke covered van after having disabled the second police car.

What the van didn't have, to Huey's utmost annoyance, was any kind of ordinance mounted on the bumpers. He pondered this and decided that he would bring it up with whosoever previously owned this van; if he were ever to run in to them. Sighing, he doubted that he would ever meet Mr Randolph from Randolph's Catering so he'd try and make up for it now. He was planning on taking a slightly more roundabout route to JFK, perhaps through a residential district or two.

Less than a moment after the catering van squealed away, the blare of multiple sirens shot could be heard descending down the street; their pitch getting higher and higher as five police cars shot through the now dissipating smoke and past the Cadillac hidden on the corner.

The ten or so seconds that it took for all of the cars to pass them felt much longer, time dilating as each member of the team felt their heart pounding in their ears. When the last car was a suitable distance away, the Cadillac roared out into the road and back the way they had come less than five minutes earlier.

Even Shepard had to s**t himself when Sam was driving. She had that delusion that everyone else was better than her, and so felt the need to prove herself. Sometimes it would manifest itself in trying to outdrink someone; sometimes it would be trying to beat multiple opponents in a sparring match. Today, it manifested itself as the high speed invasion of other cars' personal space. While this was rather fun for a minute or two, Shepard got quickly annoyed. On the verge of him complaining, though, Nina spoke up from the back seat.

"Sam, we don't want to be followed. So could you just drive normally, OK?" The blonde girl said as she pulled off her boots and slipped into more comfortable flats with an audible sigh of relief. She packed her boots, along with the rest of her operations gear, into the pink hearted suitcase that had been in the boot of the car. There were three other suitcases, one for each member of the team on the ground. They contained plain clothes which would accredit the wearer with far less suspicion than military gear and a balaclava.

The engine revved up a bit as Sam kicked the accelerator. "I _am _driving normally."

On cue, a voice came over the radio, backed by the light jazz of a flash game. "Whoever is driving the Cadillac, could they calm down? You're gaining a bit of attention," Lucas warned, with complete nonchalance. Sam kicked the floor again, only narrowly avoiding an accidental emergency stop.

Some minutes later, the car pulled up to a gate just off one of the larger terminals. Sam, the poster child for disgruntlement, sat in the back alongside Nina and the unconscious man. Shepard rolled down the driver's side window and greeted the staff manning the security gate.

"Kid, I think you might be in the wrong place -" A burly Latino man addressed the 15 year old, stopping momentarily to look at the vehicle that had just pulled up. "-and the wrong car."

Shepard smiled as he passed the man some documents and passports from the glove box. The Latino man's face dropped slightly as he scanned through the documentation, conferring with his colleagues inside the pill box-like office attached to the terminal. Some moments later, a far more well-spoken gentleman appeared.

"Mr Zimmerman?" He uttered, the syllables dancing off his lips in the wholly insincere manner of a man who had to do this day in and day out. "Your private charter isn't due to leave for another hour. Is there anything we can get you? Might we interest your party in a complementary brunch inside our VIP lounge?"

"No, that's quite alright." Shepard placed the items onto the passenger seat as the well-spoken gentleman passed them back through the window. "I think that we will be boarding quite quickly. Mr Shortcliffe has taken a turn and I think it's for the best if he and his grand-daughters can get home as quickly as possible."

The mechanised gate began to open as the well-spoken gentleman waved off the TSA officer who made a move to conduct a brief security check on the occupants of the car. They couldn't be seen to be man handling a person who had clearly had some form of stroke. Before Shepard rolled off across the tarmac, he threw his head out of the window once more.

"Actually, could we get a wheelchair?"

Huey was tearing down Rockaway Boulevard, ready to make the hasty right turn onto the airport grounds. Lucas was watching, thinking how Huey might be able to buy them some more time. "Huey, you're heading towards a construction site and I've got no visual on it. We need a bit of extra time this end, you got any ideas?"

As with Shepard earlier, Lucas didn't need to guess exactly how maniacal the grin on Huey's face would be. "Oh, just leave that to me." Huey made the turn expertly, battering down a mesh gate which proudly proclaimed the fact that the contractors currently renovating part of the airport were the safest on the east coast. Two police cars were unable to make this sharp turn and ploughed through another fence, careering into a large ditch.

He belted across grass, gravel and tarmac like he was trying to achieve time travel. A quick glance in the passenger side mirror confirmed he was still dealing with the two remaining cars. He held his hand down on the horn, blaring an alert for all the construction workers to clear his path – a feat all completed with incredible speed when they saw exactly what was heading towards them. With no discernible way out, the police would be able to trap him if he didn't extract himself from the situation sharpish. Barrelling down a level stretch of grass, he could see the perimeter fence for JFK airport. Stacked less than 200 metres away were numerous brickyard items and wooden boards.

"_Perfect._" He thought as he stepped on the accelerator, closing the gap between the van and the fence by a considerable distance. When he was close enough, he vaulted from his seat into the back of the van. He was out of the back within moments, tucking and rolling before he hit the ground. Huey's body came to a stop just in time for him to witness the three vehicles hit the makeshift ramp at considerable speed. The two police cars span off to either side at wild angles but the catering van had hit the platform dead on. Huey watched as the van soared like a leaf on the wind and a drumroll began playing in his head.

"_And…_" The van cleared the fence with centimetres to spare as the internal drumroll reached its crescendo. He raised his arms like the referees in American football matches did when a field goal was scored. "_IT'S GOOD!_"

The explosion had happened just as Sam was transferring Moore from car to plane. Shepard had seen the van momentarily as it arced into view but its descent unto the tarmac and and subsequent skid along its roof before bursting into flames had been blocked by the air traffic control building.

"Oh, for f**k's sake..." He turned to Nina, there being nobody else to turn to. "I tell him to behave himself."

Lucas was busy flipping switches and shoving screens off the instrument panel as Shepard boarded the plane.

"Lucas!" Sam yelled, dumping Moore on a seat. "We don't exactly have time to do the bloody checks!"

Lucas half-smiled without turning around. "They just suspended all flights, right after I got clearence for taxiing. Apparently, some car thief took a van on a joyride onto the runways before crashing the thing. Two runways are out of service. I'd say we've got time."

Nina wasn't impressed. She marched forward into the cockpit. "Alright, give me the radio." Lucas put up little resistance.

"JFK control, this is Uniform Tango Charlie Three Five, we require immediate take off clearence."

The American woman on the end disagreed. "All flights have been suspended until further notice."

Nina picked a laptop up and began tapping away at the kind of speed that should have turned her fingers, and most of her arms, to dust. "Negative, require immediate clearence. Cargo non-durable."

There was a sigh on the end. "What is your cargo?"

She finished typing. "Human organs, bound for UK."

A second, longer sigh. "Roger that, you have clearence to take off, use runway 13-L."

"Thankyou." Nina turned the radio off. "What a b**ch..."

Lucas finally got around to pulling out of the hangar and only stopped when he saw a figure running towards them. He pulled the "emergency" gun from under his chair just in case, but replaced it when he saw it was Huey. Shepard lowered the door, and let the boy on. "What the f**k was that?"

"Well, whilst you and Nina planned the capture, I had to sit in that comfy hotel room all day with very little to do. So I watched some football." Huey wasn't phased in the slightest. "Turns out that I'm pretty good at it."

The plane was moving again, so Huey pulled the stairs back up. It wasn't long before Lucas was at the end of the runway, ready. He could see a plume of smoke from the other side of the hangars and arrivals apron.

"What the hell are you waiting for now?" Sam screamed - she was clearly pissed that she didn't get to do very much. The general rule was that if you didn't get to do much on one mission, you'd get something big on the next one. Sam, though, had a tendency to forget that.

Lucas calmly replied "Well, I'm waiting for someone to seal the door of the aeroplane. We don't want to get to twenty thousand feet and find we can't breathe."

"Yes we do," Huey corrected offhandedly without turning away from surveying his work.

Lucas nodded. "OK," he said, as he often did. As he accelerated down the runway, he informed them "I'll drop masks at fifteen thousand. They'll activate when you pull on them, and they should last twenty minutes each. And if you end up hanging him out the door, don't use him to blow up one of my engines." As ever, he said it with an unreasonably detached tone. Nina had already fled to the cockpit - she wasn't so big on the interrogation part of things.

The front wheel came off the ground, then the rear wheels. By the time the air traffic control people and the police realised what had happened, the plane was over water.


	4. Chapter 3: Hammer Time

Chapter 3: Hammer Time

The roar of the wind and the growl of the engines that could be heard only because of the open cabin door were deafening Shepard. Although he didn't need silence to be able to think effectively, he certainly wasn't one to complain if he got it.

Shepard had readied his watch, by his calculation, he had roughly 7 minutes from when the gas masked were dropped, to when Mr Moore would undoubtedly die from lack of oxygen. It was a slow death, the air at fifteen thousand feet was very thin, and the only reasons people could go above that was because they had acclimatised to it for a while. A sudden stint into such low oxygen conditions will not be enough time, and judging on Moore's weight and relative fat to muscle ratio, he wasn't someone who went high altitude climbing much. He certainly wasn't someone who would be able to handle such brutal interrogation - especially when they weren't asking him questions that he would have any knowledge of. Intimidation, at this point, would serve a greater purpose; softening him up before the real interrogation began back in a black site on UK soil.

Sam sat on one of the plush arm chairs as she watched Moore slowly begin to come around. He'd been unconscious for most of the car ride and for about five minutes of air time, she'd had to put some warmer clothes on because the temperature was beginning to freeze her, she couldn't imagine how the only a shirt wearing Moore would feel once he woke up fully.

Huey on the other hand, sat there. dangling a hammer between his legs. Staring at it hypnotically while waiting for Shepard to initiate the interrogation. It always seemed to be the three of them on the interrogations, Nina had some kind of phobia of it, and Lucas was always doing other useful stuff, like flying the plane, or beating the Portal flash game for the umpteenth time.

Sam looked over to Shepard, he was stood there, feet evenly spread apart, eyes closed, twirling a black king chess piece between his fingers. She never understood the importance of the chess piece to Shepard, but he always had it, without fail, and was always twirling it when thinking; whether at meetings to kidnap someone or before life threatening interrogations, she'd have to ask him about it one day.

The groan from Moore was more than enough to alert Shepard and he stopped twirling his chess piece between his fingers. Putting it in his pocket he looked towards Moore who groggily looked back and sighed somewhat as he tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

"Good evening Mister Moore" Shepard said in a cold, detached tone.

"As you can see, you're no longer in your comfy Bentley, in fact, you're a long way from home, so far away, that even if you screamed your loudest most terrifying scream; nobody, not a single soul, will come to your aid."

Moore tried to take it in as he slowly began to struggle to breath. The gas masks hadn't even come down yet but his body was reacting to decreased oxygen rather quickly. "I can't..." he said as he began to take deep breaths to try and sustain himself.

Shepard had no idea how high the plane had gone thus far, but he'd imagine the gas masks were going to drop any time soon, and this was perfect. "It would appear you're struggling to breath Mister Moore. That would be because we left the door open, and we're currently at..." he paused as the gas masks popped from the ceiling, almost as if that was planned. "...fifteen thousand feet." he concluded as he started the time on his watch and put his gas mask on.

Moore's eyes widened as it dawned on him the gravity of his situation. "I swear I didn't do anything, who do you work for? I'll pay, I'll pay you double! No triple!" He ran out of breath and began to splutter and hyperventilate.

"Calm down Mister Moore" Shepard continuing coldly, his voice now distorted by the gas mask. "You're in an... unfortunate situation. So I'm going to be straight with you Mister Moore. This plane is slowly running out of oxygen, and..." he looked over at Sam as she wrenched most of the gas masks from the ceiling and threw them from the plane, narrowly avoiding the engine. "...I have the only remaining gas mask for you to use." he said dangling it in front of Moore's face.

"So you're going to tell me exactly what I want to know, or my friend with the hammer over there..." he continued with a gesture "Is going to introduce you to it."

Shepard paused to let the thought sink in. It was important to make him realise that this situation was only going to get worse, and to quote Heath Ledgers joker: "He looks like a squealer" so this shouldn't be too difficult.

Shepard however, underestimated Moore somewhat. "I'm not telling you anything! My companies secrets will go with me to the grave!" He insisted as he began to shake his head, before once again, trying to catch his breath from over exertion.

"I don't want your companies trade secrets Mister Moore, I want to know who you sold the weapons to." Shepard commented bluntly as he gestured to Huey.

Huey jumped from the seat and walked over slowly towards Moore, raising the hammer high into the air.

"Now I will ask this once, and if I don't like the response. Bye bye hand. If I ask again, and I don't like the response, we will repeat this, until eventually I get sick of you and throw this gas mask out the door." Shepard looked down at his watch, 5 minutes remaining. "Now tell me. Who did you sell the weapons to?"

Moore looked more shocked than anything. Shocked that someone would be levelling these accusations against him, certainly. It was a rather brilliant plan - if he outright denied it, he'd end up found guilty anyway and thrown in jail for longer than he would have been if he'd just admitted to fraud on a grand scale.

Of course, it took several seconds for this to run through the man's head. What didn't take several seconds, though, was the time for a hammer, propelled by an arm, to fall from the roof of the cabin to the floor. Unfortunately it was the same little segment of floor as was occupied by Moore's right hand. He screamed in pain.

"Who was it, Mr. Moore?" Shepard repeated, making an excellent display of not giving a s**t by polishing his chess piece. It was easy to do, really, given that Shepard didn't give a s**t anyway and thus had nothing to disguise.

"I didn't..." the man cried - well, that said, he was on the verge of crying rather than actively doing it. "I don't sell weapons! I-"

The hammer came down again, on the exact same spot that it had hit last time. Then, for good measure, Huey went for the shoulder, managing to dislocate it.

"Wrong answer. Three million shares don't just disappear, and you just so happened to make a fortune at the same time, Mr. Moore. About half the GDP of Uganda if I recall correctly."

The cabin PA bing bonged. "We've leveled off at thirty five thousand feet," came the removed voice that sounded very well like it could have just been the plane talking. The external temperature is about sixty degrees Celsius below freezing, and air pressure is a quarter that of sea level. Thought you'd like to know." Shepard factored that in, and figured that if machines counted as people, the cabin heating system would be working so much unpaid overtime it could technically be considered slavery.

Huey took over. He took a deep breath from his mask, then dragged the overweight man down the cabin to the open door and hung him out by his legs, so that from the knees up the man was upside down and dangling out of the aeroplane. Moore's view of the port jet engine was, frankly, incredible.

Not particularly liking the idea of getting frostbite, Huey kept his arms and legs firmly inside the cabin, and counted to five. Then he counted to five again before dragging him back inside. Mostly, anyway - Moore's head and shoulders were still _technically_ outside the aircraft.

"Who did you sell to?" Huey asked calmly, though loudly so that Moore could hear.

The man was terrified. "There were no guns! I just, I set up a few investment programs, I kept a bit aside and-"

Huey interrupted. "Forgive me if I don't believe you, but I don't believe you."

"I swear to god!" Moore yelled, with tears coming out and freezing to his face. "The scheme went with the recession, I've still got the money, I'll give it to you, I'll give it to charity, just let me live!"

Huey turned to Shepard, hoping for a shake of the head to indicate more was needed. He wasn't expecting one, though, so wasn't at all disappointed when a nod came instead. He hauled the guy back in and let Shepard do the oxygen mask while he did his best to close and seal the door of the aeroplane.

"Cabin's sealed," he said through the flight deck door shortly, before heading back to his own mask.


	5. Chapter 4: The Middle Man

Two hooded figures were crouched by the would-be-window of a building still in the early stages of being completely renovated. They had snuck into the shell of an office block two hours earlier and swept floor after floor after floor, making sure that they were completely alone. Some of the stairs had been partly demolished so they had to climb around gaping holes that would have dropped them a fair bit.

There had been the fewest of words exchanged between them as they methodically set up a vantage point on the fourth floor, suitable for spying on the meeting. A single tripod was set up, with a low light camera aimed at the car park across from them, able to snap pictures and transmit them nearly instantly to Lucas – thanks to the connected laptop perched on top of a bag of spray cans. Hooded tops and spray paint – there was no better alibi for a pair of teenage spies.

It was only after dawn when some of the earliest bird cries rang out, breaking the silence that had been present for so long. Leaning against the uncovered concrete wall, the first figure articulated an open question in a hoarse voice.

"Think it was too much?"

"Honestly, I think he wouldn't have lasted if we had continued." Huey didn't look up from behind the pair of low-light binoculars currently held to his face. "His stint in the black box pretty much cemented that. Not even an hour and he spilled the beans."

"I imagine that the prospect of spending Christmas day with you and a wide variety of B&Q tools loosened his tongue somewhat."

"We've got something" he nodded towards a car that was heading their way before turning back to his binoculars. "Do you mean to tell me that I'm not jolly enough to spend Christmas day with?"

"On the contrary, I think that it's your jolliness that convinced Mr Moore to set up this meeting." Shepard held the binoculars to his face and followed the form of Ralph Moore as he pulled the pristine Mercedes (loaned from the CHERUB driving pool) into the parking garage and stepped out with some difficulty. The man began to fidget with his cufflinks, obviously nervous about this meeting. Shepard wrinkled his face from behind the binoculars.

"For Christ's sake, man, stop dicking around with thirty thousand pounds' worth of tech."

It was quite funny, if one took time to think about it. Weapons smuggling had been a fraudulent charge used to convince Moore that he really was in over his head when they had picked him up from New York. It was only when he was taken to a clandestine prison used by the British intelligence services that he had begun to spill his secrets.

What followed would go down in history as one of the shortest meetings that a de-facto leader of Unit C would have with the Chairman (this, of course, is not to be confused with the longest meeting of this kind which came some months previously after Sam had been found drunk in the dojo, singing _'La Marseillaise'_after having taken down six Navy shirts).

The team had been on campus for less than three hours following the transfer of Moore into a secured safe-house before being sent back out into the field. It was good that this mission was only a stake-out because they were, each of them, still coming down from the effects of the previous days' mission.

Moore insisted that although he didn't know the name of the middle man, he did know how to set up a meeting with him. A slew of phone number and email address data had been worked through by Nina and Lucas whilst Sam, Huey and Shepard worked on the best positions for reconnaissance based on the information that Moore had given up. Six hours later, they found themselves in a part of London being reconstructed before the Olympics.

Nina and Sam were sat in an old VW Polo a street away, ready to tail whoever Moore had arranged a meeting with. His clothes having suffered the type of damage one would expect from being held out of a plane, he was kitted out at the expense of the British government. This included a pair of cutting edge audio transmitters cleverly hidden in his Saville Row cufflinks. The audio was being transmitted to the team members courtesy of a computer-bound Lucas sat back in the four star hotel that the team had been most generously put up in for the night.

"On your right – a BMW. Try to get as many as you can." Shepard motioned to the black car that was coming in from the opposite end that Moore had used.

Huey snapped twenty or so pictures as the second car pulled further into the parking garage and out of sight. As they popped up on the laptop screen, they showed a man with dark close cut hair at the wheel. His facial features didn't give much away to either of the boys. He only hoped that Lucas' Google-Fu (a term which Lucas found quite patronising in describing his ability to utilise government databases) could yield something.

Unfortunately for the boys, their vantage position didn't have a clear line of sight into the part of the car park that Moore and the man had moved into. The cufflinks, however, were clear as day in transmitting the pair greeting each other.

"Ralph! I heard that your car was involved in some kind of accident." The man was well spoken but his voice carried the cadence of someone for whom English was not a mother tongue. Eastern European. Perhaps Baltic? Russian, at a stretch. Huey's eyes darted from behind the camera to look to Shepard for some further insight. He had his hand against his hood, pressing the earpiece further into his ear in an attempt to block out the cacophony of bird shrieks.

"Well..uh.." Moore's nervousness was transmitted loud and clear over the cufflinks. "I'd like to think that I escaped quite unharmed. The only thing I have to show for it is a pair of broken fingers."

If the cufflinks worked both ways, both men would have heard a stifled giggle coming from some 100 metres above them.

"Not to mention the loss of your Bentley and the unfortunate passing of your driver." The smirk was practically audible. "Speaking of which, kudos on keeping the story out of the papers. I don't think your CEO would be too happy to see General Motors' stock plummet if it became known that one of his senior men was caught up in a…. what was it again?"

"A natural gas explosion. A freak accident is what most people are calling it. I just don't want it compromising what I'm doing." A loud _skitch _could be heard as Moore rubbed his face. Both boys winced slightly from behind the window-hole. "I'm technically over here in Europe to run negotiations for a new contract"

"So is that what this meeting is?" The well-spoken man's tone shifted slightly. Each word more precise than the last. _"Negotiation on the contract?"_

"Not at all. Just a small tweak on our terms of agreement." Moore replied, displaying the sort of confidence that had earned him four oratory awards at GM. "I want to skip you – I don't want to deal with the middle man."

There was a pregnant pause. Moore continued, voice gaining an air of authority.

"I just think that it's time for me to meet whoever it is that you're represe—what are you-?"

A gunshot rang out, scattering the birds from the buildings. Then a second. Time seemed to dilate as the sound of a prematurely muted scream was transmitted from the cufflinks. For all intents and purposes, it would sound like the misfiring of an engine to most people. The rolling out of the building gave nothing away and the driver turned to head into the centre of the city.

While Huey was snapping pictures of the well-spoken killer's car as it sped off, Shepard pulled his earpiece out before dialling a number on his mobile. "He's heading your way. Do not, I repeat, do not lose that car, Nina. Moore's been shot."

Stowing his phone in his pocket, Shepard turned to Huey. "It's only a matter of time before police are called in by some nosy so-and-so. You're going to have to get over there before that happens. Torch the car and remove the plates."

Huey nodded and bolted quickly out of the room, taking with him a can of spray paint. Shepard sat down on the hard floor with his head against the wall and let out a sigh as the noise of the morning returned once more.

"Fuck."

* * *

The pair of them had been sat in the car for almost four hours and had spent it in what some could describe as amicable. At first, there had been an argument over what to listen to, with Sam wanting to waste away the morning with whatever XFM were playing and Nina wanting to listen to chart music. Sam had claimed driver's prerogative and Nina had retorted with the fact that her choice would be 'less conspicuous and therefore less detrimental to the mission objective.' What had started off as a disagreement quickly devolved into a physical affair, with each girl slapping the other's hands away from the radio when it was to be changed between stations.

During this scuffle, the car radio was scanning between stations so fast that it eventually landed on something neither of them intended – a morning talk radio show. Both of them stopped what they were doing and sat back in their seats, silently listening to the topic being discussed by a member of the public with a most horrible East End accent.

_"Well, yeah, we've just got to be more vigilan' about this kind of thing. I mean, if it can happen in New York, what's to say that we're not sitting on some hotbed of explosive gas?"_

"Well, you've got to remember that this city's got a far more extensive underground system. Chances are that any gas pockets like that would have been vented out over the last 100 years. And even if they weren't, Transport for London or whatever department takes care of that kind of thing probably knows where these things are!"

"Yeah, you say that but, I've got a mate right, Phil. 'E reckons that it we shifted the Tube lines one metre either way, there'd be explosions like the ones they had in New York every time the trains went past."

"Oookay, thanks for calling in, Mark. It's just gone 8am and to update listeners on today's top story, there have been 9 reported fatalities and more than eighteen injured in yesterday's accident in New York. Included in those who were tragically lost is a pair of eight year old twins, Laura and Max Webb—"  
  
A crackle of static filled the car as Nina fiddled with the SCAN button on the radio, changing the frequency to find something better to listen to. The radio, in its infinite wisdom, settled on a pop station and the tones of that week's top artist began to blare. She began to hum along to the song, pretending not to see the eye-roll it engendered from Sam.

"What was that?" Sam asked, not two minutes later. She turned the radio off, waiting to see if she could hear the sound again. The noise- a gunshot – rang out once more. The two girls looked at each other but neither could say anything before Nina's phone went off. She answered and relayed the information to Sam who, quick as a fox, started up the car and pulled out into the road. The sudden-ness of it all caused Nina to drop her phone under the car seat – too far back for her to reach. Sam saw this and pulled her own phone from her pocket before throwing it to the other girl.

"I'll get Lucas to track him." Nina caught the phone from Sam and dialled into the hotel where Lucas was currently holed up in front of a laptop screen, casually flicking between flash games and a stream of CCTV cameras. He had already received the photos that Huey had sent him and had run the plates through the road traffic cameras, ready to track the car through the city.

As soon as the call came in from Nina, Lucas had at least three cameras covering the BMW at all times. A secondary program was running facial recognition from the images captured of the driver at various traffic lights, hoping to gain some clue as to who he was. For almost an hour, the car twisted and turned through the roads of London and all the while it was followed at some distance by a VW polo and the all-seeing eye of Big Brother Lucas.

That was, however, until the car pulled into a maze of side roads bordering the main road it had been on.

"I'm going to lose camera coverage in a few moments." He relayed. "You need to maintain visual contact with him."

"Right." Sam affirmed to Lucas' voice on the phone's loudspeaker. "If I pull into the parallel road, I can cut him off as he pulls out the other side."

"No!" Nina protested. "Pull in behind him otherwise we'll lose our line of sight."

"I've been doing this longer than you have, Nina." Sam grinned, sure of herself as she pulled into a side road. "I know what I'm doing."

The further the VW went in to the small residential quadrant, the more the houses all began to look the same. A sort of mock-antique housing block. All lined with the same trees and the same types of cars. As Sam pulled around the VW, her voice raised in victorious triumph and caught in her throat.

The car was nowhere to be seen.

"I think he's gone." Nina offered up, meekly.

"Lucas?" Sam asked gruffly, her previous smug grin having been worn off. She pulled the car out of the side street and back onto the main road, parking it against pavement. "Anything?"

"_No_" Lucas replied curtly. _"He's gone_."

"Shit!" Sam bashed her fist on the top of the steering wheel. "We've lost him."

Nina did not think it wise to correct Sam on her choice of pronoun. Especially not when she was in striking distance of the visibly annoyed girl. Instead, she offered up a constructive idea.

"Lucas, patch us through to Shepard" Nina looked through the back window, seeing if she could spot the lost car.

_"Go."_ Short. Concise. Clear. It was one of the defining things about Shepard, he was _always _on the job. A complete opposite number from that new guy Huey. He seemed like he was never on the job - even when they were getting shot at, he was still smiling. But with Shepard...it was never informal or otherwise casual, it was always business. At least, that's how he was with the team.

She'd only seen Shepard smile once. A few weeks earlier, she had been strolling around campus, enjoying the frosty leaves that lined the pitches when she heard a squeal and some laughter. This being a campus inhabited by upwards of two hundred children, she shouldn't have paid it much mind.

For some reason, she did just the opposite. She looked up and saw had seen Shepard with his girlfriend. Nina had come up blank for a name but she had moved over to one of the trees and watched them together.

Shepard was smiling. Shepard was _actually smiling!_ The very same person who had shot a man in cold blood on her first Unit mission. She didn't understand how there could exist such duality. How he could switch off and be this different person. How what they did didn't _affect _him. Maybe now would be a good time to ask.

"Shepard, I ne-"

"THERE!" Nina's phone call was cut short by a white van driver's horn blaring non-stop as Sam pulled the car out in front of it. She had spotted the BMW coming back down the road and had wasted no time getting behind it, exercising a sharp U-turn from their parked position.

"Shepard" Sam snatched the phone from Nina, who was looking at her hands in a daze. "We've got him on Goldhawk Road. Swanky part of town."

"_Keep following_" The order was without hesitation. "_Phone in again when you're at his final location._"

The phone was plopped back into Nina's lap as Sam kept on the BMW's tail. Up ahead, a traffic light was edging dangerously at yellow, threatening to hide the BMW once more. Sam had other ideas and quickly sped up, cutting in front of two cars to edge out before the lights turned.

"Quickly," Nina pointed towards the turning that the BMW had just disappeared down. The VW was growing more conspicuous the further they followed this car into the upper class West End of London. The pair of them watched as the car pulled into a small offshoot road, protected by a gate. An Armani suit arm leant out of the window to swipe a card which allowed him further access to this private road, leaving the VW on a nearby corner.

"Well," Sam whistled, impressed. "I guess this is him, then. I'll call it in."

Whilst the large digital camera would be far too noticeable at this time of morning, Nina had pulled out her phone and was using it to video the man pulling into a driveway halfway down the road. It was too far down to make out the house number but that wouldn't be a problem once she sent this video to Lucas.

* * *

"Please stop touching my monitor."

"Look, if you just apply an improved technique, we can crack it."

"Please stop touching my monitor."

"Okay, I understand that you're rooted in your own ways but I think that a fresh idea can be beneficial."

"Please stop touching my monitor."

"Huey" Shepard shouted from his perch on the hotel sofa. "Stop touching the fucking screen."

"Fine, whatever!" Huey threw his arms up in defeat. "I only wanted to help him beat Tower Defence!"

"Sssh" Shepard held his finger to his lips, calling for silence as he pulled out his phone. Sam was on the other end. "Go."

"_We've got our guy on some fancy private road but we can't quite make out the house number. Nina's streaming across some video._"

Shepard looked up to the computer and saw Lucas bring up the video being referred to. It showed the well-spoken man in a finely tailored blue suit entering a nice town-house. Lucas brought up secondary geo-positional data and the address _6 Rylett Road_ popped up on screen.

"Right, bring yourselves in cleanly and we'll go from there." Shepard ended the call and sat himself back down onto the sofa, enjoying the momentary sile-.

"Please stop touching my monitor."


End file.
